Friday 1 February 2013

How Did I Take That? Number 2 In Series.

Little Langdale Tarn


This photograph is totally a reactive one. No planning went into this shot at all.

Little Langdale Tarn is near the foot of Wrynose pass in Cumbria, within the English Lake District National Park.

I was in that part of the world photographing The Great Lakeland Challenge Event organised by The Wooden Spoon Charity www.spoonchallenges.com 

Teams of three or a relay team of nine paddle the 10.5 mile length of Lake Windermere in a three man canoe, cycle 26 miles up 1:3 gradients of Wrynose and Hardnott passes and then navigate on foot the 3,208 feet of Scafell Pike all in less than 12 hours!!! 

I on the other hand used a speed boat and a car!!

So after being on Lake Windemere at 6am it was 9.50am and I was making my way towards the top of Wrynose  pass to get some shots of the cyclists struggling! The weather was awful, very dark and heavy rain.

Now I have passed this site before and the obvious photo to take here would be one of the tarn with hill and trees behind reflecting in the still water just left of where this picture was taken. I've yet to be there when the waters are still!!

Just as I drove past the tarn I stopped the car and parked for a moment as the sun was trying to break through the heavy dark clouds. I picked my camera up and put my 70 - 200m F2.8 lens on and waited till the sun broke through, about twenty seconds. 

The shot composed itself really with the sun shining on the vegetation on the slopes with the darkness as the backdrop and lake in the foreground I had stumbled across a lovely scene which now hangs on the living room wall.

I used the telephoto lens at its 70 mm end just to flatten the perspective a touch. Using Aperture priority on my camera I set the aperture to f 7.1 at ISO 400 which gave me a shutter speed of 1/500 second which was quick enough to keep everything sharp with no camera shake as I was hand holding the camera.

Goes to show that sometimes the obvious picture is not the best picture, always have your camera ready  and a lot of the time photography is all about being at the right place at the right time. Either by careful planning or just simple good fortune!!

Mick Ryan   February 2013

Thursday 31 January 2013

How Did I Take That?






First thing to say as this is the first in a series of blogs on how I’ve taken certain  photographs. I plan some shots, I react to some shots too and I plan some shots and end up reacting to something different.


To Catch A Train At Dawn.



Ok, this was taken on 22 May 2012 at 5.35am in Arnside , a village in Cumbria, England. It faces the estuary of the River Kent on the north eastern corner of Morecambe Bay.

I was sitting on the sofa the evening before watching the weather forecast on the TV. The weathergirl said is was gonna be a lovely day, clear skies with a little mist to start the day. 

Knowing that area of the country quite well I thought the weather would be perfect for some early morning shots of the via-duct and estuary. 

Packed the camera, tripod and went to bed. Rudely awaken by the alarm at 3.15 am, give it another five minutes……Woken by the smell of coffee wafting up my nostrils, made by my lovely girlfriend and assistant for the day, Angie.

Arrived at Arnside after an hours drive at 4.45. Light was just beginning to beat back the darkness so I set out for a walk to look for good photographic view points…

I had taken a few pics of boats on the sand etc and just before the sun broke the horizon (to the right of the picture) the colours were stunning!!

This is a picture I had had in mind for years but never got round to taking it. So camera (Canon 5D MK 11) in place,  24 – 105  f4 lens fitted with a 2 stop graduated filter to darken the sky a touch , I composed the shot. Click! nice!

Lovely photograph of the via-duct at first light on a misty spring morning. Then! I heard the train coming!!! Camera back in position….

I set the camera to manual mode and put the settings in I had metered for.
An ISO of 100 for maximum quality, an F stop of 11 for a sharpness of details throughout and a shutter speed of 1/25 to fit in with the other two settings and using a tripod with a remote release.

I took three photographs of the train but this is the one I felt worked best, with it making its way into the photograph and out of the mist. If only it had been a steam train!!! ah well maybe next time……..


Mick Ryan 2013









Monday 21 January 2013

A Matter Of Time In Bethlehem



A Matter Of Time In Bethlehem
By Mick Ryan
After agreeing to a request from The Christmas Decorators to document their trip to Palestine to decorate the iconic Christmas tree in Manger Square in Bethlehem, I came up with an idea!
Wouldn’t it be good to do a time-lapse video of the tree being decorated from start to finish? Estimated time for complete job was 24 hours. Nick, managing director of The Christmas Decorators, a Liverpool-based firm, thought it was a great idea because it was something they hadn’t done previously and it could perhaps help them gain more publicity.
And so to the next stage – figuring out how this could be done. I was aware of the time-lapse capabilities of my Canon 5D mk11 (with a few additions), but I needed my DSLR with me for the reportage shots I also needed to take, plus, I didn’t want to take two bodies with me. Also, I didn’t know the layout of the place or how secure my equipment would be left somewhere for 20-plus hours.
After reading Nick Stubbs’ review of the Gopro3 Black on the All Things Photography website and finding out that time-lapse capabilities were included, I decided to order it from the GoPro website.

GoPro no-show
At this point, I must admit, I hadn’t checked stock availability. Two days before my flight to Tel Aviv and GoPro was a no-show! After some searching I found the number for their office in Holland. I rang them and was told, as stated on website, they had no stock till Monday 17 December. My flight was scheduled for Wednesday 12 December!
Plan B! I went back online and searched for time-lapse cameras (the “GoPro3 Hero is good…” Yeah, I know!) Then KGB cameras of Wellingborough came out the blue with an advert for the Brinno TLC 200 Time Lapse Camera. I did some research, knowing that I was going to buy it anyway. It didn’t get great reviews, but I phoned up and explained my needs and asked if they could get it delivered the following morning to my parents’ house, because I also had to sort out my passport. They could and they did.
I opened the box to find a camera that looked like a pepper pot. I played around with it for a bit; filming myself packing my suitcase and camera bag. It was ok. It’ll do the job, so into my bag it went.
Time for action
We flew to Tel Aviv and then made the journey by road to Bethlehem in a blacked-out minibus. We arrived at our hotel Inter Continental, Bethlehem, which was very nice, I must say. Bags safely deposited in our rooms, by now it was 11pm, but thankfully we were not too far away from Manger Square. After a Twenty Five-minute walk and with the time fast approaching midnight, finally, we arrived. I couldn’t really see anywhere to site my time-lapse camera that would be secure, apart from the roof of one of the surrounding buildings.

 We were introduced to the Mayor Of Bethlehem, who thanked us for travelling to his city and if we needed anything, he said we should just ask. Immediately, I asked! The following morning at 6am I met a security guard who was to accompany me up to the top of the Peace Centre to place my ‘pepper pot’ camera. What a view, and ideal for the time-lapse of the tree as the decorators went about their work. Once in place, it was time for me to wander off to take some quality images of Bethlehem. No worries. Or so I thought.
It was 8.30 am; two hours in and after wandering about taking photographs of everything and anything (and being thrown out of the site of the nativity by a Greek Orthodox high priest for possessing a tripod at the ungodly hour of 6.30am), I returned to the square to be greeted with the tree decorators saying: “Mick, there are some guys on the roof up there and one of them picked your camera up.”

Up on the roof
After tracking down the mayor and pleading with him to be let back up onto the roof, I found myself on the roof using sign language while addressing three Palestinian guys working on electrics not to move my camera again. They nodded in agreement and I re-positioned the pepper pot. I also took a few rooftop pics with my Canon.
At 3am the following morning, the decorators had been very busy and the tree was nearing completion, so it was time to go and retrieve my camera. The building was locked up, so I went to find one of the security guards to open up for me, but he said he would have to get permission from the army. They said, no chance!  So I had a camera on top of a roof in Bethlehem and no way of getting it back. What to do? Go for a drink!
I ordered a bottle of local beer and sat down to lick my wounds. As luck would have it one of the mayor’s assistants who had done most of the sorting out was having a coffee while sorting some business. I explained my predicament and he said: “leave it with me”.
An hour later and on my third bottle of beer and I was staring out into the darkness and my “pepper-pot” camera was placed on the table in front of me. Nothing was said, just a wink.
Yes, Prime Minister
The following day it became apparent why I wasn’t allowed back up on the roof. The Prime Minister of Palestine, Salam Fayyad, was arriving to switch on the Christmas lights in Manger Square and there were army snipers on the roof of the Peace Centre!
After the turn on we were invited to the Convention Palace for dinner with the Prime Minister and all the heads of the armed forces and politicians. What an experience it had been.
My time-lapse has been played on mainstream television in the UK on news programmes and morning chat shows, as well as news channels across the globe.




My GoPro was there when I got back and I found out that it would not have lasted any where near the length of time needed to capture the footage required. What a blessing in disguise?  And thanks to my little pepper pot camera, I achieved what I set out to achieve... Eventually.
Mick Ryan – January 2013